Gaza Ground Campaign Mirrors Battle of Sadr City?

While many parallels have been drawn with Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah, the fight bears more than a passing resemblance to last year’s battle of Sadr City, a U.S.-led offensive to stop elements of Iraq’s Jaish al-Mahdi militia (the so-called "special groups") from using Baghdad’s Sadr City as a launching pad for rocket attacks against the Green Zone.

It was a nasty, street-to-street fight. While the battle raged, U.S. combat engineers literally walled off the southern quadrant of Sadr City to push insurgent rocket teams beyond the range of the Green Zone. U.S. drones paired with attack helicopters loitered north of the wall, striking insurgent targets deep inside Sadr City — like Gaza City, a densely populated area.

This is not to suggest the Israeli military is taking a page from the U.S. campaign. But both the U.S. and Israeli militaries have adopted a tech-heavy approach to countering indirect fire attacks.

In an interview last year for Jane’s, Col. John Hort, the commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, told me that countering rocket attacks required "tactical patience."

"We would wait seven or eight hours for the [launch] rails to be picked up and moved to another location," he said. "We watched the enemy conduct what we call an ‘after action’ review or pick up more rockets; that’s when we would hit him."

The results were lopsided: the U.S. military estimated that it killed around 700 militia fighters; six Americans died. But while the Sadr City "Gold Wall" pushed rocket teams out of the range of the Green Zone, the barrier was not impermeable. And in the end, the solution was political, not military: a truce was concluded with the Jaish al-Mahdi, and Iraqi troops were able to take up checkpoints inside Sadr City.

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